So, you have decided to start your own SEO business. Welcome to a very crowded pool. The water is still warm, but you may have trouble finding space to chill out and relax. That’s because nearly everyone and his brother considers himself an SEO expert. What is your edge against the competition? Hopefully, it is local SEO services.
My advice to any entrepreneur looking to jump into the SEO pool is to do local SEO services first. After local services start generating significant income, it is appropriate to start looking at regional, national, and global services. Not doing local first is a big mistake. If you want to know why, just look at small business statistics in the U.S.
Most Businesses Are Small Businesses
We hear politicians and economic experts talk about small businesses all the time. A small business is classified as one with fewer than 500 employees. Here’s the kicker: according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 99.9% of all businesses in the U.S. are small businesses. But that’s not all.
The Chamber also says that most of those small businesses are local. That means they are locally owned and operated. Their employees are all local residents. They do not have regional, national, or global offices. Enter local SEO services.
Making the Most of Search Engines
The practice of SEO is rooted in making the most of search engines. It is in the name: search engine optimization. SEO experts, like Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing, work on behalf of their clients to ensure that client websites and pages rank as high as possible on search engine result pages (SERPs).
What does this have to do with local SEO services? Everything. General SEO relies on a number of strategies to ensure solid SERP performance. They include:
- Keyword research
- On and off-site optimization
- Content creation and distribution
- Integration with social media
- Internal and external link building
Local SEO utilizes the same strategies but with a twist: the strategies are optimized to target a local audience. A perfect example is any one of the several medical cannabis companies Webtek provides services to.
A Strictly Local Business
By its nature, medical cannabis is a strictly local enterprise. It wouldn’t do any good for Webtek to target patients living in Arizona, Colorado, or California. Likewise, a medical cannabis pharmacy in Salt Lake City doesn’t need to target customers living in Brigham City.
Webtek taps into local SEO strategies to target each pharmacy’s local customer base. One way to do that is to utilize local keywords in both on and off-site content. Webtek would focus on keywords familiar to Salt Lake City residents when targeting that metro area. But when targeting residents in Brigham City, they would use keywords familiar to that locale.
Keyword choices are just one option for leveraging local SEO services to improve SERP performance. The point being made here is that general SEO does not focus on local strategies. By definition, it is more general in nature.
Better at Reaching Local Audiences
Local SEO strategies do a better job of reaching local audiences because that’s what they are designed to do. And because the majority of American businesses are locally owned and operated, the need for local SEO services should be self-evident.
Any entrepreneur looking to start a new SEO business would be wise to focus on local SEO first. More general SEO can come later. By focusing on a local audience initially, the entrepreneur can build a solid business with the resources and reputation to tackle larger audiences in the future.
